I appreciate those kind words Darian! but honestly, there is a lot of work to do before I am honestly ready for a relationship.
They aren't simply kind words, but my current outlook on life.
Who said gay men must have relationships to be fulfilled or have a sex life?
For me, I think a friends-with-benefits situation would be the most I could handle at the moment: somewhere on the spectrum between a full-on relationship and nothing. My health and social phobia makes it difficult to aspire to a conventional relationship, although occasional sex would be better than the nothing I experience at the moment.
However, there is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship, occasional anonymous sex or nothing at all. Society seems to have promulgated and encouraged a very rigid heterosexual template for lifestyle to meet it's own ends, which hasn't allowed many to consider what is actually right for them. We have been indoctrinated with expectations that may not be right for us as individuals and ignores the diversity that exists. By the same token, I think the homosexual revolution has gone to the opposite extreme by presenting a template of rampant anonymous casual sex as the target to aspire to.
I deplore the pressure put on transgendered individuals to be binary instead of being allowed to be who they are and express that within society as they are: at the end of the day, their sexual expression is only relevant to intimate acquaintances, not the rest of society in general.
The difficulty these days IMO, is finding others compatible with our own diversity, not because they don't exist, but because I think we are too scared to be who we are in case we are rejected and because the opportunity to slowly reveal who we are in a safe environment is not readily available.
I would dearly like forums such as JUB to be an avenue for people to discuss who they really are, for others to notice and perhaps facilitate the establishment of a private rapport.
